THE RENDEZVOUS BY THE CROSS
Beneath the reserved and somewhat melancholy front which he generally
presented to the world, the Count of Fieramondi was of an ardent and
affectionate disposition. Rather lacking, perhaps, in resolution and
strength of character, he was the more dependent on the regard and help
of others, and his fortitude was often unequal to the sacrifices which
his dignity and his pride demanded. Yet the very pride which led him
into positions that he could not endure made it well-nigh impossible
for him to retreat. This disposition, an honourable but not altogether
a happy one, serves to explain both the uncompromising attitude which
he had assumed in his dispute with his wife, and the misery of heart
which had betrayed itself in the poem he read to Captain Dieppe, with
its indirect but touching appeal to his friend's sympathy.
Now his resolve was growing weaker as the state of hostilities, his
loneliness, the sight of that detestable barricade, became more and
more odious to him. He began to make excuses for the Countess--not
indeed for all that she had done (for her graver offences were unknown
to him), but for what he knew of, for the broken promise and the
renewal of acquaintance with Paul de Roustache. He imputed to her a
picturesque penitence and imagined her, on her side of the barricade,
longing for a pardon she dared not ask and a reconciliation for which
she could hardly venture to hope; he went so far as to embody these
supposed feelings of hers in a graceful little poem addressed to
himself and entitled, "To My Cruel Andrea." In fine the Count was
ready to go on his knees if he received proper encouragement. Here his
pride had its turn: this encouragement he must have; he would not risk
an interview, a second rebuff, a repetition of that insolence of manner
with which he had felt himself obliged to charge the Countess or
another slamming of the door in his face, such as had offended him so
justly and so grievously in those involuntary interviews which had
caused him to change his apartments. But now--the thought came to him
as the happiest of inspirations--he need expose himself to none of
these humiliations. Fortune had provided a better way. Shunning
direct approaches with all their dangers, he would use an intermediary.
By Heaven's kindness the ideal ambassador was ready to his hand--a man
of affairs, accustomed to delicate negotiations, yet (the Count added)
honourable, true, faithful, and tender-hearted. "My friend Dieppe will
rejoice to serve me," he said to himself with more cheerfulness than he
had felt since first the barricade had reared its hated front. He sent
his servant to beg the favour of Dieppe's company.
At the moment--which, to be precise, was four o'clock in the
afternoon--no invitation could have been more unwelcome to Captain
Dieppe. He had received his note from the hands of a ragged urchin as
he strolled by the river an hour before: its purport rather excited
than alarmed him; but the rendezvous mentioned was so ill-chosen, from
his point of view, that it caused him dismay. And he had in vain tried
to catch sight of the Countess or find means of communicating with her
without arousing suspicion. He had other motives too for shrinking
from such expressions of friendliness as he had reason to anticipate
from his host. But he did not expect anything so disconcerting as the
proposal which the Count actually laid before him when he unwillingly
entered his presence.
"Go to her--go to her on your behalf?" he exclaimed in a consternation
which luckily passed for a modest distrust of his qualifications for
the task. "But, my dear friend, what am I to say?"
"Say that I love her," said the Count in his low, musical tones. "Say
that beneath all differences, all estrangements, lies my deep, abiding,
unchanging love."
Statements of this sort the Captain preferred to make, when occasion
arose, on his own behalf.
"Say that I know I have been hard to her, that I recede from my demand,
that I will be content with her simple word that she will not, without
my knowledge, hold any communication with the person she knows of."
The Captain now guessed--or at least very shrewdly suspected--the
position of affairs. But he showed no signs of understanding.
"Tell her," pursued the Count, laying his hand on Dieppe's shoulder and
speaking almost as ardently as though he were addressing his wife
herself, "that I never suspected her of more than a little levity, and
that I never will or could."
Dieppe found himself speculating how much the Count's love and trust
might induce him to include in the phrase "a little levity."
"That she should listen--I will not say to love-making--but even to
gallantry, to a hint of admiration, to the least attempt at flirtation,
has never entered my head about my Emilia."
The Captain, amid all his distress, marked the name.
"I trust her--I trust her!" cried the Count, raising his hands in an
obvious stress of emotion, "as I trust myself, as I would trust my
brother, my bosom friend. Yes, my dear friend, as I now trust you
yourself. Go to her and say, 'I am Andrea's friend, his trusted
friend. I am the messenger of love. Give me your love--'"
"What?" cried the Captain. The words sounded wonderfully attractive.
"'Give me your love to carry back to him.'"
"Oh, exactly," murmured the Captain, relapsing into altruistic gloom.
"Then all will be forgiven between us. Only our love will be
remembered. And you, my friend, will have the happiness of seeing us
reunited, and of knowing that two grateful hearts thank you. I can
imagine no greater joy."
"It would certainly be--er--intensely gratifying," murmured Dieppe.
"You would remember it all your life. It is not a thing a man gets the
chance of doing often."
"No," agreed the Captain; but he thought to himself, "Deuce take it, he
talks as if he were doing me a favour!"
"My friend, you look sad; you don't seem--"
"Oh, yes, I do--yes, I am," interrupted the Captain, hastily assuming,
or trying to assume, a cheerful expression. "But--"
"I understand--I understand. You doubt yourself?"
"That's it," assented the Captain very truthfully.
"Your tact, your discretion, your knowledge of women?" (Dieppe had
never in his life doubted any of these things; but he let the
accusation pass.) "Don't be afraid. Emilia will like you. I know
that Emilia will like you. And you will like her. I know it."
"You think so?" No intonation could have expressed greater doubt.
"I am certain of it; and when two people like one another, all goes
easily."
"Well, not always," said the Captain, whose position made him less
optimistic.
The Count felt in his waistcoat-pocket. Dieppe sat looking down
towards the floor with a frown on his face. He raised his eyes to find
the Count holding out his hand towards him; in the open palm of it lay
a wedding-ring.
"Take it back to her," said the Count.
"Really had n't you better do that yourself?" expostulated the Captain,
who felt himself hard driven by fate.
"No," said the Count, firmly. "I leave it all to you. Put it on her
finger and say, 'This is the pledge of love--of love renewed--of
Andrea's undying love for you.'" He thrust the symbol of bliss into
Captain Dieppe's most reluctant hand. The Captain sat and looked at it
in a horrified fascination.
"You will do it for me?" urged the Count. "You can't refuse! Ah, my
friend, if my sorrow does n't move you, think of hers. She is alone
there in that wing of the house--even her cousin, who was with her, was
obliged to leave her three days ago. There she sits, thinking of her
faults, poor child, in solitude! Alas, it is only too likely in tears!
I can't bear to think of her in tears."
The Captain quite understood that feeling; he had seen her in them.
"You will help us? Your noble nature will force you to it!"
After a moment's hesitation, pardonable surely in weak humanity, Dieppe
put the Countess's wedding-ring in his pocket, rose to his feet, and
with a firm unfaltering face held out his hand to his friend and host.
"I can refuse you nothing," he said, in most genuine emotion. "I will
do what you ask. May it bring happiness to--to--to all of us!" He
wrung the Count's hand with a grip that spoke of settled purpose. "You
shall hear how I fare very soon," he said, as he made for the door.
The Count nodded hopefully, and, when he was left alone, set to work on
a little lyric of joy, with which to welcome the return of his forgiven
and forgiving spouse.
But it was hard on Captain Dieppe; the strictest moralist may admit
that without endangering his principles. Say the Captain had been
blameworthy; still his punishment was heavy--heavy and most woefully
prompt. His better nature, his finer feelings, his instincts of honour
and loyalty, might indeed respond to the demand made on them by the
mission with which his friend entrusted him. But the demand was heavy,
the call grievous. Where he had pictured joy, there remained now only
renunciation; he had dreamed of conquest; there could be none, save the
hardest and least grateful, the conquest of himself. Firm the Captain
might be, but sad he must be. He could still serve the Countess (was
not Paul de Roustache still dangerous?), but he could look for no
reward. Small wonder that the meeting, whose risks and difficulty had
made it seem before only the sweeter, now lost all its delight, and
became the hardest of ordeals, the most severe and grim of duties.
If this was the Captain's mood, that of the lady whom he was to meet
could be hardly more cheerful. If conscience seemed to trouble her
less, and unhappy love not to occupy her mind as it governed his, the
external difficulties of her position occasioned her greater distress
and brought her near despair. Paul de Roustache's letter had been
handed to her by her servant, with a smile half reproachful, half
mocking, she had seized it, torn it open, and read it. She understood
its meaning; she saw that the dreaded crisis had indeed come; and she
was powerless to deal with it, or to avert the catastrophe it
threatened. She sat before it now, very near to doing just what Count
Andrea hated to think of and Captain Dieppe could not endure to see;
and as she read and re-read the hateful thing she moaned softly to
herself:
"Oh, how could I be so silly! How could I put myself in such a
position? How could I consent to anything of the sort? I don't know
what 'll happen. I have n't got fifty thousand francs! Oh, Emilia,
how could you do it? I don't know what to do! And I 'm all
alone--alone to face this fearful trouble!" Indeed the Count, led no
doubt by the penetrating sympathy of love, seemed to have divined her
feelings with a wonderful accuracy.
She glanced up at the clock, it was nearly five. The smile that came
on her face was sad and timid; yet it was a smile of hope. "Perhaps he
'll be able to help me," she thought. "He has no money, no--only fifty
francs, poor man! But he seems to be brave--oh, yes, he 's brave. And
I think he's clever. I 'll go to the meeting-place and take the note.
He 's the only chance." She rose and walked to a mirror. She
certainly looked a little less woe-begone now, and she examined her
appearance with an earnest criticism. The smile grew more hopeful, a
little more assured, as she murmured to herself, "I think he 'll help
me, if he can, you know; because--well, because--" For an instant she
even laughed. "And I rather like him too, you know," she ended by
confiding to the mirror. These latter actions and words were not in
such complete harmony with Count Andrea's mental picture of the lady on
the other side of the barricade.
Betaking herself to the room from which she had first beheld Captain
Dieppe's face--not, as the Count would have supposed, as a consequence
of any design, but by the purest and most unexpected chance--she
arrayed herself in a short skirt and thick boots, and wrapped a cloak
round her, for a close, misty rain was already falling, and the moaning
of the wind in the trees promised a stormy evening. Then she stole out
and made for the gate in the right wall of the gardens. The same old
servant who had brought the note was there to let her out.
"You will be gone long, Contessa?" she asked.
"No, Maria, not long. If I am asked for, say I am lying down."
"Who should ask for you? The Count?"
"Not very likely," she replied with a laugh, in which the servant
joined. "But if he does, I am absolutely not to be seen, Maria." And
with another little laugh she began to skirt the back of the gardens so
as to reach the main road, and thus make her way by the village to the
Cross on the hill, and the little hut in the hollow behind it.
Almost at the same moment Captain Dieppe, cursing his fortune, his
folly, and the weather, with the collar of his coat turned up, his hat
crashed hard on his head, and (just in case of accidents) his revolver
in his pocket, came out into the garden and began to descend the hill
towards where the stepping-stones gave him passage across the river.
Thus he also would reach the village, pass through it, and mount the
hill to the Cross. His way was shorter and his pace quicker. To be
there before the lady would be only polite; it would also give him a
few minutes in which to arrange his thoughts and settle what might be
the best way to open to her the new--the very new--things that he had
to say. In the preoccupation of these he thought little of his later
appointment at seven o'clock--although it was in view of this that he
had slipped the revolver into his pocket.
Finally, just about the same time also, Guillaume was rehearsing to
Paul de Roustache exactly what they were to do and where their
respective parts began and terminated. Paul was listening with deep
attention, with a curious smile on his face, and with the inner
reflection that things in the end might turn out quite differently from
what his astute companion supposed would be the case. Moreover--also
just in case of accidents--both of these gentlemen, it may be
mentioned, had slipped revolvers into their pockets. Such things may
be useful when one carries large sums of money to a rendezvous, equally
so in case one hopes to carry them back from it. The former was M.
Guillaume's condition, the latter that of Paul de Roustache. On the
whole there seemed a possibility of interesting incidents occurring by
or in the neighbourhood of the Cross on the hillside above the village.
What recked the Count of Fieramondi of that? He was busy composing his
lyric in honour of the return of his forgiven and forgiving Countess.
Of what was happening he had no thought.
And not less ignorant of these possible incidents was a lady who this
same evening stood in the courtyard of the only inn of the little town
of Sasellano, where the railway ended, and whence the traveller to the
Count of Fieramondi's Castle must take a carriage and post-horses.
The lady demanded horses, protested, raged; most urgent business called
her to pursue her journey, she said. But the landlord hesitated and
shook his head.
"It 's good twelve miles and against collar almost all the way," he
urged.
"I will pay what you like," she cried.
"But see, the rain falls--it has fallen for two hours. The water will
be down from the hills, and the stream will be in flood before you
reach the ford. Your Excellency had best sleep here to-night. Indeed
your Excellency must."
"I won't," said her Excellency flatly.
And at that point--which may be called the direct issue--the dispute
must now be left.